Comparing Sweden to NYC isn't fair.
NYC Subway has ~742 stations (v. ~100 in Stockholm) and 1,756M in annual ridership (v. ~328M in Stockholm). This is just for the subway and excludes NY transit bus ridership.
Perhaps area is not a representative metric since you have to factor in population density when deciding where to site stations. Wikipedia says that NYC Subway is 380.2 km (236.2 mi) long while Moscow Metro is 364.9 km (226.7 mi) long, so the two are close in terms of route length. Also, Moscow beats out New York in terms annual ridership: 2.4b vs 1.8b.
> The official count of stations is 472; however, this tabulation classifies some transfer stations as two or more stations, which are called "station complexes" within the nomenclature of the New York City Subway. If station complexes are counted as one station each, the number of stations is 424.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_stations
I definitely did![0] Should be 472 (as you stated.) Thank you for correcting.
The wiki says 179 (1/10th your number).[0]
There is also Toei Subway, JR East trains, Minato-Mirai, ...the list goes on. 2100 may work for the entire metropolitan area of greater Tokyo.
In any case, the city is massive, extremely well connected by public transport, and services millions of people daily without delay.
I could probably believe the 2,100 number if you include all the surrounding prefectures that are in the broader Tokyo area, and if you count stations multiple times for each railway operator services them (it's not uncommon for a single station in Tokyo to be run by three or five different companies).
> There are around 136 individual rail lines in the Greater Tokyo Area, and between 1,000 and 1,200 railway stations depending on one's definition of the area.
so here's my personal theory.
all numbers - city population count, station numbers, system length and ridership - scale at a pretty much constant factor of 4. there are at least two huge differences though: density - that's ny:28,491/sq mi vs. vie:11,205/sq mi and year of opening is 1904 vs. 1976.
i'm pretty sure density is one of the deciding factors here, but let's pretend it's not - as ridership is comparatively lower at 3.99x -, what else might be different is the budget. viennas subway system is excellent but is so far up the curve of diminishing returns that the last few percent of reliability that sets it apart come at a steep price (the city pays with taxes).
other factors: vienna has a lot of alternatives in the form of trams and busses (and to a certain extend, trains), which take pressure of the subway. rate of biking is actually low compared to other cities because the public transport system is so good (and cheap).
so, some guesses as to why the ny subway system is so much worse:
* age: 1904 vs. 1976 - not sure if there's much of a difference as stations, trains and tracks have to be renewed periodically anyway. * density: population density is almost trice as high, but actual ridership scales linearly with the rest * travel distance in a randomized environment with choke points: if you'd assume that entry and exit stations are randomly distributed and the average travel distance is thus 4 times as long, the risk of encountering a malfunction is 4 times as high - and it takes just one to fuck your timetable up. not sure how likely that is, as, i guess, travels tend not to be randomly distributed in real life (i.e. you'll more likely choose a job that's closer to home). * budget: the big question here. is the ny subway public transport system 4 times as expensive as the viennese one? do they employ 4 times as many people? do they have the same level of machinery maintenance?
As a result of this lineage it also has quite frequent stops, which are easy to put in when the subway is just a stairway's height beneath the street. To give you an idea, the 1 line stops at 14th, 18th, 23rd, 28th, and 34th Streets. That's five stops in one mile.
This table has the subway at the world's ninth oldest, which is definitely still one of the oldest considering there's hundreds now: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-oldest-metro...
As a tangent, London is adding overground trains as part of its expansion. The Overground is pretty recent (and it shows) as is the fully-automated DLR, and now there's a Crossrail making an appearance. NY hasn't invested in a hell of a lot in overground infrastructure and it feels like that's a logical step in the outer boroughs.
Quick Wiki search indicates NYC has about 1,112 km of rail vs Stockholms 105.7 km. So about 8-9 times the distance